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Art

Artist Jeff Koons admires his Puppy (1992). Carpeted in colorful swaths of flowering plants, the 41-foot-tall Westie joined the Guggenheim Bilbao’s permanent collection in 1997 and stands in the square just outside the museum entrance.

Shine On: Jeff Koons in Bilbao

Frank Gehry’s titanium-clad Guggenheim plays host to a stunning survey of Koons’s larger-than-life career

Allis Markham puts the finishing touches to her entries at the World Taxidermy & Fish Carving Championships in Springfield, Missouri, on May 6.

Why Taxidermy Is Being Revived for the 21st Century

A new generation of young practitioners is leading a resurgence in this centuries-old craft

Afghan men stand near the ruins of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan.

Cool Finds

Destroyed Buddha Statues Are Coming Back to Life in Afghanistan as Beautiful 3D Projections

3D light projections recreate a pair of statues destroyed by the Taliban

Filthy Lucre, 2013-2014, by Darren Waterston, MASS MoCA installation

Urban Explorations

Whistler’s Peacock Room is Reimagined in a State of Oozing and Broken Decay

In Filthy Lucre, a new installation at the Sackler Gallery, artist Darren Waterston deconstructs Whistler’s masterpiece

People look at ancient Assyrian human-headed winged bull statues at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad March 8, 2015.

Trending Today

Museums Issue Most-Threatened List of Iraqi Treasures

Seven types of cultural objects are under threat from the Islamic State and instability in Iraq

Graphic design student Oskar Pernefeldt envisions a blue and white flag to symbolize Earth's presence on far off planets like Mars.

Does Planet Earth Need Its Own Flag?

Some think we need a universal flag to stake our claim in space

One of the LATA 65 students works on a mural in Lisbon.

Cool Finds

Lisbon Artists Are Teaching Graffiti Classes for the Elderly

Grannies learn about street art history and how to tag walls

Urban Explorations

Seven Works of Art to Visit That Use Discarded Junk to Create Masterpieces

One person’s trash is another person’s artistic inspiration

Speechless (Women of Allah), 1996

Iranian Exile Shirin Neshat’s New Exhibition Expresses the Power of Art to Shape Political Discourse

An exhibition of the artist’s work at the Hirshhorn is an allegorical narrative framed against historical and political realities

A guard patrolling the ruins of Nimrud in 1995

Trending Today

Cyber-archeology May be the Way to Remember Artifacts Destroyed by Militants

Digitally saving 3D models is the only way to offset some lost cultural artifacts

Cool Finds

There’s a Hospital for Statues in Argentina

When the going gets tough for Buenos Aires statues, they head to a statue-only hospital for a bit of TLC

Detail from The herball, or, Generall historie of plantes gathered by John Gerarde, purportedly depicting Shakespeare.

Trending Today

Is This a Portrait of Shakespeare? One Historian Says Yes, Many Say No

Many experts doubt whether the engraving found in a 400-year old book is actually the Bard himself

Two Nudes in a Forest, from 1939, one of the paintings on display in the Bronx. Kahlo painted it for Dolores del Río, an actor who played the role of the "other" in Hollywood films and who often played Indian women in Mexican films despite that she was not herself of indigenous descent, as Joanna L. Groarke writes in the book that accompanies the exhibition.

Urban Explorations

Visit Frida Kahlo’s Recreated Garden to See the Plants That Influenced Her Art

The New York Botanical Garden is showing rare paintings and drawings alongside the types of flora Kahlo herself once cultivated

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, in his New York City Studio in 1940, is at work on the painting Upside Down Table and Mask, currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Meet the Iconic Japanese-American Artist Whose Work Hasn’t Been Exhibited in Decades

A reexamination of the inventive artist, who blended American and Japanese traditions, brings rarely seen works from around the world to the Smithsonian

Claude Monet’s Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, France

New Research

Computers Are Learning About Art Faster than Art Historians

An algorithm took just a few months to draw connections between artists that scholars have been working on for years

"Women of Algiers (Version O)" by Pablo Picasso before it went on sale at Christie's auction house in New York City

Trending Today

Picasso Painting Breaks Auction Record by $37 Million

“Women of Algiers (Version O)” fetched nearly $180 million

In Camille Utterback's 1999 Text Rain, viewers become part of the artwork.

In this Exhibition You Can Play with the Artworks, Or Even Be the Art

A dizzying array of wildly unorthodox works from video games to computer codes makes up this summer’s blockbuster “Watch This!” show

Would Elaine de Kooning have been a better known artist if she hadn't married the leading Abstract Expressionist of the 20th century? (Self-portrait, 1946)

Why Elaine de Kooning Sacrificed Her Own Amazing Career for Her More-Famous Husband’s

The free-thinking Abstract Expressionist, even while in her partner’s shadow, captured an era with skill and élan

The day Darwin climbed Patagonia’s Mount Tarn, Conrad Martens painted it from across the bay.

The Beautiful Drawings by Darwin’s Artist-in-Residence

On the famous HMS Beagle voyage, painter Conrad Martens depicted the sights along the journey

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